Various strategies have been used over the years to identify target markets for consumer goods and services. Product planning, development, manufacturing, and distribution often require significant investments of time and resources to provide a successful new product. Miscues may seriously impact a company's financial performance and could even lead to the demise of the company, or allow competitors to capitalize on a misinterpretation of market demand. Similarly, companies are continually seeking new consumers for their goods and services by improving market penetration in existing markets and/or expanding to new market sectors or geographic areas. Successful companies typically gather and attempt to analyze tremendous quantities of consumer data from diverse sources to try to understand the behavior of a target market or segment for an existing or yet-to-be developed product or service.
The ubiquity of personal communication devices, such as cell phones and the internet have led to rapidly emerging and evolving market dynamics that are often well ahead of the ability of a company to recognize the changes and adapt accordingly. Conventional strategies for market data gathering and analysis are limited in their ability to identify and collect relevant data, and to analyze and present the data in a manner that is easily understood by business decision makers.